Howdy Chuck
Welcome to website / forum . . . officially . I also started with Queso Blanco, easy to make, but just tasted like curdled milk, bleh .
Congrats on graduating and getting job, I guess being a poor student for the last few years it may seem like an expensive hobby but it actually is pretty cheap, especially if your eat your own product or trade for beer!
Congrats on getting a source of Raw Milk, very envious, hope 4 gallons/month is enough .
Thanks for the warm welcome Cheese Head!! Congrats on this site taking off and being successful, I've been coming here for some time now and it's really grown!
And I agree that this is a relatively inexpensive hobby (my other hobbys are cars/racing, definetly NOT cheap!), although my friends are always like..."So, how much did it cost to make this Neufchatel instead of just buying it from the store?" They don't understand
However, I plan on buying a wine fridge (maybe ~$100 or so?) for my "cave" to control temp/humidity, this is my biggest obstacle so far. I'm going to the hardware store this weekend to fabricate my own cheese press, so I look forward to that.
Little known fact about myself, I'm from Cincinnati and graduated from Univ. of Cincinnati, and the man Fankhauser himself is a professor at one of the branch campuses of U.C, so I plan on e-mailing him to see if I can buy him lunch and talk about cheese for a while.
And for the record my name is Scott, I just made this "cheesy" handle because I suppose I have a twisted sense of humor. But you can call me Chuck for now